Literary frou-frou

[icarus]

The essay that I'm reading.

"...focusing on the singularity of the language allows us to notice that the literariness of literature makes the language itself part of the content."

Can one shoot the author for that phrase alone? I've no doubt that somewhere there's a database with addresses and whatnot. I'm sure we can track her down.

Crap. I spend all my life trying to make what's been overly complicated, simple. Cleaning up the unnecessary confusion and obfuscation. I get the impression that these people like to bury their meaning. They're not attempting to communicate and connect.

I understand it. She's saying that the language is more important to the story than the plot, tells us more, gives us more meaning -- and I agree. The reason I think Beg Me For It is a good story is because of the POV character, how he filters the story, and what it tells the reader that it's the "ordinary guy" Ron, and what his filtering says about the gap between a horrific experience and how we handle that experience. Bottom line is that Beg Me For It is very hopeful, even while it doesn't ignore how we get effected in ways that we don't notice by the circumstances of our lives. It does say that we have power even when we're powerless. The story isn't in the plot. The story is in Ron's reactions and asides, his irreverent attitude.

Draco's a contrast, but he's doing the same thing. His bluntness shows his stark refusal to be controlled by his circumstances. But his way has its downside: he's clearer, cleaner than Ron, but all hell is unleashed against him. Ron's way is safer, but little compromises sneak in till he's changed in ways he doesn't intend. Draco's changed, too, but mostly on the outside (with all the bruises and abuse). It turns out that Draco's the one who takes lasting damage - he breaks - but his sharp words act as a wake-up call to Ron. Ultimately, the fact that Ron was starting to tell "Death Eater"-type jokes reveals something more sinister: that over time his compromises would have changed him too much. So that's the dark side weighed against the hope.

See? That was clear, wasn't it? No "literariness of literature" to be found. But yes, Spivak, how a story is told reveals a great deal.

*grumbles at overly stylistic frou-frou writing*


ETA (much later): Okay, cesperanza's right, my dissection here isn't formalist enough. I still swung back to dissecting character. But! I can do it. Really.

On the other hand -- I feel vindicated. Learned from the prof. this morning that Spivak has won the New York Times' mean spirited Worst Academic Writer award (so has Judith Butler). More than once. Even proponents call her style "tortured English."

Yes, I feel tortured all right.

Comments

[catrinella.livejournal.com]

Gayatri Spivak? Wow, I've not been a professional lit person for a very long time, but I didn't realize people were still reading her.

(I think I became an editor out of revenge. ;-)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm going to shoot her. This reminds me of why I hate Joyce.

Icarus

[hilarita.livejournal.com]

That style of writing, and shoehorning everything in to some kind of theory (Marxist, feminist, queer, post-colonial...) really put me off most of lit. crit. There are perfectly valid things to be said, but if you can't write it in straightforward language, don't bother.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The concepts are lovely, but reading it is like being trapped in a small tight room with an old man who has gas.

Icarus

[libitina]

But yes, Spivak, how a story is told reveals a great deal.
Yes, but that makes a really short book when you are trying to publish.

I hate literary theory with a burning passion - good luck.

Also, when I bought my car, it came with a trunk full of literary theory books. I can't think of a thing to do with them - I don't even think there's anywhere that would take them, if I gave them away for free.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

A little concrete and some mortar and you could build a nice, solid wall with them.

What is the difference between a writer and a literary critic?

Icarus

[libitina]

Is that like what's the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?

How about - why is meta on livejournal often more interesting than published literary theory? And is calling it meta instead of critical theory like calling rape non-con?

I think it can certainly help a writer's skill to have some grounding in literary theory, but I have no idea why it has to be so painful.

So if it's not a joke, I don't actually have an answer.

[libitina]

Also, (building on what cesperanza said) I think there is the style of writing that is necessary to world building (e.g. different people presenting their worlds in vocabulary and language, like you have Ron doing) - and there is writing where it's also about the clever manipulations of the words themselves (e.g. I like how Jeanette Winterson can do this... and Vergil did it, too)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

When I read Joyce in the late 80s I abandoned the idea of writing and studying literature altogether and became a Buddhist nun instead. Even though I was "good at it" I decided that literature (and lit studies) was meaningless and benefited no one, while at its worst produced a sort of self-centered arrogance (Joyce being an example of its worst).

Now I have the juxtaposition of wildernessguru's mother's cancer -- the sort of very real anguish that I noticed 20 years ago -- and the very type of literary study that turned me off in the first place. And I still feel exactly the same.

I'm trying to come to grips with this and my need to write, and I'm coming to the conclusion that creativity is utterly divorced from literary criticism. They're not even on the same planet. Maybe there's a world of difference between being Joyce and writing Ulysses, and being a critic and analyzing it.

I find value in writing (not as much value as being a nun, but still some) that I'm not seeing in these classes. The heavy weight of cancer has taken away the enjoyment I have in learning in and of itself, reminding me that I have a time limit in my own life. I find I want to strip away things that are not important to me.

Icarus

[libitina]

1) I am not a creative person, but I have talked to enough people to get the impression that writing just bubbles out of some people, and there is no stopping it. If writing brings you joy... if you feel addicted to writing... if writing calms you, excites you, and wrings you out and you need that... then you should never stop writing. If your characters speak to you, then you should never stop writing.

ii) Writing is not the same as publishing. It at least used to be that in order to be published, someone had to look critically at your work and decide it had merit. This is only relevant if writing or discussing writing is your vocation and you plan on making money at it.

C) Literature benefits me. Seriously. I enjoy reading; therefore, someone has to write the stuff in order for me to get my pleasure. Now I certainly can't ever hope to get through 10% of everything ever written to date... but that doesn't mean I can't also enjoy the stuff you are writing right here and now that appears readily packaged on my internet.

IV) You can do worthwhile things *and* write.

I do not, however, think I have made a convincing argument for higher education.

What do I know? I have a degree in Classical Studies. At best, it has made me more entertaining at cocktail parties and unimpressed by predictions of the immenent downfall of civilisation.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

1)
ii)
C)
IV)

*laughs*

I'm not having the same reaction to my Asian Studies class (there I'm merely behind). It could be I just hate postmodernism. Either that, or I'm in the wrong major. Do I belong in an English major (fortunately I have two) when I'm hating it this much?

This crap divorces literature from what interests me. It's like turning on the stereo and getting no sound, and having some asshat music critc tell me it's the concept of sound that matters. They may feel profound and clever with that statement. I don't care.

I'm also having a really shitty day. I have to write a paper on something I hate this much, my boyfriend's mother is sick, I'm behind with no chance of catching up, my Powerpoint presentation that I worked on until 10pm last night was just eaten by my computer, my clock on my computer was wrong (and I forgot) so I missed an important class today. Now I have to meet with a presentation partner tonight empty-handed. I'm going class in an hour empty-handed. And I'm going to come away from this quarter empty-handed. Except for my grades. My grades are going to really suck. I'll get that much.

Icarus

[libitina]

So that Classical Studies degree? Was soul suckingly painful. I loved the research and the classes, but producing papers on it was agonising torture.

I failed out... I think it ended up being three times. And the took me back. I was required to take short leave of absences twice. And they took me back. After the second one, I was very close to tranferring to the school where I had spent the term off... and I'm still not sure I made the right decision when I went back.

But. I have a piece of paper.

I could have majored in anything - the content so rarely matters. It was just the subject about which I felt most excited.

There was only one important lesson I learned.

Done is good.

Even if you think the presentation is crap, even if the essay is shitty - get it done. Crap is still good enough; whereas promises are useless. Give yourself permission to produce crap. Say what you need, and then get out of there. Short the word count. Double space. Turn in your outline. Anything you need - just get something done.

I rather wish I'd learned that lesson earlier in college.

I certainly never expected college to teach me to lower my expectations for myself.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that was helpful. It's a lesson I learned in corporate America (where done is not only good, it's everything) but being graded on quality made me forget.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

No, actually, she means more than what you're talking about; you're still talking about plot and character. She's talking more about language as poetry, where--you know, if you use a window/backyard metaphor, most people just want the window (language) to be relatively tranparent and let you see the yard, okay, maybe with some colored glass here and there to alter mood, etc. But in a lot of literary fiction, they're interested solely in the glass, and they're not interested in most glass that appears in most windows we use everyday: they're interested in only individual hand-blown pieces, the bubbles, etc. So we're talking about words and patterns of words in a way that most people would find actually obstructionist to the "story"--like, as you said in another comment, Joyce.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I'm not talking about character, I'm talking about language, in this case structure: refusing to allow the reader the direct experience and instead inserting the POV between, filtering it.

The story is a Buddhist concept: we do not experience anything directly. There is a gap, a spaciousness, built into the structure of the story. That gap is illustrated by the huge difference between the character's response (humor) and what we would expect it to be (horror). People don't usually like "gap," they think it will cold, but this is what's good.

What looks like a simple sex story is me nattering on about meditation, building the point into the structure instead of stating it in the plot.

Icarus

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

So we're talking about words and patterns of words in a way that most people would find actually obstructionist to the "story"
Something tells me John Gardner (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679734031/qid=1148504761/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-9469847-3700706?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) would disapprove of this type of writing on principle. He of the incessant nattering about the integrity of the "fictive dream." He who goes on at length about how alliteration and internal rhyming should be AVOIDED at ALL COSTS.

But then, he also says that anyone with grammar problems should give up now because they are hopeless, rather, than, you know, trying to fix them.

A great writer on writing, but a little too rigid in his predilections, methinks.

But, I digress.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, drat. I read it again. Yes, you're right. I wasn't formalist enough in my method. But I can do it, and still be clear. I'm sure of it.

The professor told us today that Spivak has won the New York Times "Worst Academic Writer" award more than once which is a tremendous relief.

Icarus

[greenling.livejournal.com]

I read that as "the style the book is written in becomes part of the mood, and thus, part of how the book is experienced, moreso in 'literature' because the author is usually conscious of how this works in a good book and uses it to aid rather than detract from the story". How particular turns of phrase and sentence forms can make something seem fanciful or serious or dramatic, that sort of thing.

Which I guess is why she's writing nonfiction- "literariness of literature"? What?

[mad_maudlin]

There are two things wrong with litcrit:

1. Critics know that the only audience for their work is other literary critics, and the only function of their work is further literary criticism. Therefore there's no pressure to be clear, concise, or even coherent. The froufrou and the jargon become a shibboleth, and a naked emporer effect sets in.

2. There is no right answer, so there is no good answer, just more or less clever ones. The whole point of the exercise becomes the argument itself; the conclusions reached are pretty much incidental.

I think it's valuable to know how to think and argue this way, but lit crit as an end and mean in and of itself is pretty much pointless.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Literary frou-frou hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Icarus

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

Best estimation ever of lit crit. *toothy grin*

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

The thing about sentences like that is at first glance, they seem to mean something, if only I as reader weren't so distracted/uneducated/ill-informed to see what that might be.

Which makes them so popular in edu-speak.

But life's too short for that kind of shit, IMO. The happy thing about not being in school is that if I find myself reading this kind of tripe, I can hurl the offending "literature" (well, providing it's print and not online) as far as my little arms can hurl. And then I mock it on LJ.

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

literariness of literature.... that kinda makes me hurt for humanity. that reminded me of this cartoon i watch *sheepish*. arthur, the aardvark. there's one kid in his class that's been held back a couple years.
the music teacher was trying to get him to understand music. so she said "music is like ear-painting."
"huh?"
"it's like art for the ears."
"huh?"
"it's like.... music."
"ohhh.."

sometimes those people make me hurt. other times they make me laugh.

[srichard.livejournal.com]

But the literariness of literature, as a phrase, encompasses a question that students of literature are perpetually trying to answer (or giving up on, but still being interested in). It's another way of talking about "making strange," as it was called by the Russian formalists. It's asking what is it that happens to words at some point that makes them literature. It's also an attempt to do so beyond the confines of fiction or poetry or non-fiction, in a way that interrogates everything that we write and read.

As lit crit goes, that one's pretty straightforward and reasonable.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

This is a terrible writing style. There is so much conceptual masturbation going on the reader has to hit the brakes and re-read it four times. Then we take out our secret lit-crit decoder ring we're issued in English class -- at which point we can giggle amongst ourselves and feel just how clever we are.

But the fact is, if the reader has to take it apart to arrive at the meaning, you haven't been profound, you've been unclear.

The concept is not a problem. The wisest people can take complicated ideas and express them simply. Call it the Zen of writing.

You know what the irony is? Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy is a brilliant example of clear simplicity expressing complex ideas. And Spivak's morass here is about that book.

Icarus

[painted-blind.livejournal.com]

But the fact is, if the reader has to take it apart to arrive at the meaning, you haven't been profound, you've been unclear.

I'm curious- would you apply this to poetry, too? I mean, to use a specific poet as an example, Gerard Manley Hopkins is incredibly unclear in most of his poems, and there are some of them that I still don't get properly. He buried meanings everywhere, and wanted people to have to work to get it, and on the one hand I kept wanting to scream at him when I was studying his work, but on the other hand I found it really gorgeous, and loved the way it was so unclear.

Here via daily_snitch, btw.

[tamerterra.livejournal.com]

It works well for re-reading - everytime you look at it you find something that wasn't apparent last time. Which is kind of cool.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Spivak is not poetry.

Icarus

[naatz.livejournal.com]

Here via daily_snitch.

That person has a point. Choosing your phrasing makes all the difference in the story.

Ron and Draco in BMFI stem down into words, sentences and paragraphs. Each one has his own signature, and it's portrayed by words. Writing Ron as Draco would've made things weird, and vice-verse.

However, I agree on the over-complicatedness in that sentence.

{BTW, what's stylistic frou-frou?}

|Meduza|

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My whinging got written up on the daily_snitch? Must be a slow news day.

{BTW, what's stylistic frou-frou?}

You said it actually: overly complicated writing styles that obfuscate the meaning.

Icarus

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that's downright lucid for Spivak. She has some doozies that made me want to fling myself from the top of the English department building. How about "the participant in a disjunctive periodicity of positive or negative energizing"? That's so opaque it's almost cool in a Gertrude Stein-y kind of way. And I just picked that one at random. :)

The problem is Derrida. He made it okay to write like that. Who knows...maybe it reads better in French.

I don't know...I have kind of a love/hate relationship with that kind of dense lit crit writing. Oh the one hand, I think there's a place for it. On the other hand, it's alienating, it isolates the academy from the rest of the world, it encourages elitism, etc. I guess my feeling toward it is "nice place to visit but I'd never wanna live there."

*uncrosses eyes from skimming Spivak*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

How about "the participant in a disjunctive periodicity of positive or negative energizing"?

Holy fucking cow. I'm speechless.

On the other hand, it's alienating, it isolates the academy from the rest of the world, it encourages elitism, etc.

That pretty much sums up my feeling about it. Nice to be able to decode it, but in my opinion writing is supposed to be understandable. If it isn't, then the point -- communication -- has not occurred. It is not a failure on the part of the reader, but a failure on the part of the writer. *gives Spivak a bouquet of skunk grass* Under no circumstances should we encourage this.

*uncrosses eyes from skimming Spivak*

We have to be careful. Too much and they might freeze like that.

Icarus

[skuf.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that these people like to bury their meaning. They're not attempting to communicate and connect.
Science, so true!

Apart from that, I still disagree with the sentiment: the story is told using language, so of course it's important. But language isn't the story, and the story always comes first. Ok, I know what I mean.

here via daily_snitch

[caeliluminar.livejournal.com]

"...focusing on the singularity of the language allows us to notice that the literariness of literature makes the language itself part of the content."

Sentences like that were the main reason I decided to study history instead of literature. Sadly, even academical history books have a tendency to do that.

Re: here via daily_snitch

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've been eyeing the world history major with a sense of longing....

Icarus

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

here from the dail ysnitch too...
I can only say thanks for termign that coin. ITs' a good way to describe this kind of style. I also think there are ways to use stylistic trickery in a careful and fucntional way. Which mostly means to me if you know how to do it, don't hesitate to use it. But ihave the impressio nsome folks use it because they think it's cool. Andthe fact that their stuff is flooding with it just shows thatthey only find it cool or fun to try.
SO nottoo much complicated phrasign for me (moreso becaue English isn't my native tongue.) adn definitly no jump-through-three-hoops refferences, adn especialy notwiththe bonsu effect of 'y ouonl ygetit or real if you knowwho we're punningabout'. you know? (I cna't give examples but it happens to me most frequently with in-jokes.)
Anyway, thanks for that-one.

[m-ho.livejournal.com]

Does "literariness" have a foundation Russian? Or is it the English version of the concept? I'm asking because I wonder if it is the unfamiliarity of the word that stops the flow of conversation.

Spivak is like many LJ theorists, in that they get trapped in meme, neglecting to push the repeated ideas beyond their accepted boundaries and meanings. Although, meme allows ideas to reach a larger audience, simple memes fail to engage the audience in a conversation, they only inform readers. More densely packed moments allow a back and forth between ideas and brains. However a better technique than Spivak's is to stretch and modify concepts as they are taught, using the same language, because codification generally eases communication. Once you, as a literary theorist, use "literariness of literature" in everyday conversation, e.g. just as surfers use "hang ten," the phrase/sign takes on more characteristics of the concept/signified. If, as a literary theorist, you want to introduce apprentices to the craft, you can lay out the concept behind phrases, make up a little dictionary. Or, as surfers use context to pick up the concept behind the phrase "hang ten," you can expect literary theorist apprentices to do the same. Just because Spivak is uninventive, doesn't mean her tools are unsound, just poorly used.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Spivak has a giant gaping hole in her argument. She says that fiction isn't real, it's just language -- point taken. But then she goes on to say that Lucy is all parataxis, therefore cultural/historical criticism isn't the way to read it.

The logic there is that language = syntax.

Bullshit. Language is syntax and semantics (and pragmatics, etc.). What are semantics? Oh, gee, culture and history.

She uses an impenetrable writing style to create the impression that her logic is rock solid when it's flimsy. That's just deceptive and proof that clarity is important for a writer, and lack of clarity is big red flag.

Icarus